100,000 fight back the neoliberal attack on education in
Germany

By Andreas Hippin <sg885hi@unidui.uni-duisburg.de>, 6
December 1997

More than 40.000 students and pupils took part in a manifestation on
Thursday in Duesseldorf, the capital of the federal state of
Northrhine-Westphalia. Traffic came to a standstill while student
protestors were marching through the central business district to the
state assembly. More than 100.000 took to the streets in Germany as a
whole to fight back the fiscal attack on education.

Although Anke Brunn, the social democrat secretary for education had
left the social democrats annual convention in Hannover to discuss
with the students the protestors made it very clear that they would
not talk to her. Anke Brunn is responsible for all the cutbacks in
education in the state of Northrhine-Westphalia. Her party is as eager
to streamline higher education according to the interests of the
industry as the conservatives are.

The introduction of tuition fees would make it impossible for children
from poorer families to get a university education. University
education in Germany is still free of charge at the moment, but the
conditions students have to study under are miserable. Apart from
overcrowded seminars and lectures many professors are neither willing
nor able to fulfill their obligations in teaching.

The contents of education is trimmed according to the demands of
mighty sponsors, e.g. the WestLB, a major bank, pays for an academic
chair dealing with Modern China at the University of
Duesseldorf. Kloeckner and Haniel are paying for East Asian area
studies at Duisburg University. It's getting more and more
difficult to study the topics you are really interested in. There are
more and more obligatory classes, etc.

So one of the questions raised during the protests was why students
should pay tuition fees for this kind of job-qualification measures
adjusted to the needs of the industry while, their colleagues who are
receiving an education within the industry are getting paid for
it. Who wants to pay for job-training schemes?

In contrary to 1968 today's generation of student protestors
isn't decided yet whether to try to negotiate all the way through
the institutions like their predecessors did. Confronted with the
arrogance of the former rebels who denounce their protests as
apolitical or economic demands there is a sense of
confrontation growing stronger amongst today's protestors. More
and more students consider themselves part of job-qualifying schemes
which makes it simpler to connect their actions with other
people's struggles against social cutbacks.

Duisburg's students decided to continue their strike until next
Tuesday on a mass meeting attended by 2.000 students on
Wednesday. Their demands are still the same: the prohibition of
tuition fees, social welfare benefits for everyone, an end to
discriminating laws against foreigners living here and more democracy
within the university's institutional framework.

After all still more than 70 institutions of higher education are on
strike in Germany.

Andreas

More information at the following URLs:
http://fsrinfo.uni-duisburg.de/streik/
http://www.lahn.net/streik/